2407 Ballet Dancer

Sunday, May 24, 2009

A ballet is on the tv in the background. This one has a lot of male dancers, and I am reminded of a conversation I had in the lounge in college, 1963.

Those were the days of heavy gay-bashing. Gangs of otherwise intelligent male college students would roam the streets at night looking for suspected gay guys to beat up, while avoiding the gangs of townies looking for college students to beat up.

I've never understood what the straight guys had against gays. They absolutely hated and feared them. Violent anger. Why?

Anyway, one day we're at a table in the lounge, and the guys were going on sneeringly about how "all male ballet dancers are definitely gay."

I said, "Wouldn't you like to be in their place?"

Quizzical looks.

Me: "Well, they spend all their working day in rehearsal with hordes of beautiful, young, slender, graceful, superbly flexible women, AND they are paid to touch them in sometimes rather intimate places that you guys won't get anywhere near without practically begging. They have to be careful on stage, but in rehearsal, well, slips happen. You've seen where their hands go." (1963. A college with strict curfews and moral rules. These guys were likely virgins, and would stay so for a while.)

Silence. Wide eyes. You could hear the brain-gears grinding.

Me: "Maybe they're not gay. Maybe they're just graceful and smart. Ballet has got to be a lot more fun for a hetero than running numbers in a sterile office."

Long silence, followed by a change of topic.

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Post script - of the five or six guys at the table, all of us girls, but none of the other guys, knew that one was gay, and one was at least bisexual. The gay one was so flamboyant in his gestures, I don't know how he managed to stay alive.
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